Pedro Merino (b.Zaragoza, Spain) received his M.Sc.
degree in Organic Chemistry in 1986 at the University of Zaragoza where he was
awarded (1986) the Gregorio Casanal-Poza Price from the Faculty of Sciences. In
1989 he obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry (Heterocyclic Chemistry) under the supervision of Professor
Enrique Melendez in the same University. Between 1989 and 1991 he worked in Ferrara (Italy)
as a post-doctoral associate with Professor Alessandro Dondoni on the application
of Thiazole Chemistry to Asymmetric Synthesis. In 1992 he joined the University
of Zaragoza as Assistant Professor where he started his independent research
on Asymmetric Synthesis. In 1993 he was promoted to Associate Professor and in 1994 he
was appointed Senior Lecturer at the same University. In 2005 he won his habilitation as full professor in Organic Chemistry and in 2006 won a Chair in Organic Chemistry at the University of Zaragoza where he is currently developing his research. In 2012 he was appointed the DIrector of the Department of Synthesis and Structure of Biomolecules of the Institute of Chemical Synthesis and Homogenous Catalysis (ISQCH) at the University of Zaragoza.

Pedro Merino is the responsible of the Bioorganic Chemistry Research group (recognized by the Regional Government of Aragon as a consolidated group) and his docent activities include coordination of the european
Socrates-Erasmus program with the Universities of Firenze, Messina, Napoli, Torino, Ferrara and Catania,
in Italy and Toulouse and Paris in France. Pedro Merino is coauthor of more than 200 papers (h = 37) including several reviews, compendia and book chapters. He contributed to the major reference work Science of Synthesis (Thieme) with six chapters and an update, and in 2012 Thieme sponsorized his plenary lecture at the XXV European Colloquium on Heterocyclic Chemistry helded at Reading, UK. He is also the editor of the book "Chemical Synthesis of Nucleoside Analogues", published by Wiley in 2013. SInce 2000 he has given more than 50 conferences in congresses, symposia and research centers.

He currently resides
in Zaragoza with his wife Rosa (environmental chemistry engineer) and their sons Pedro (b. 1996), Javier
(b. 1998) and Ignacio (b. 2006). Outside the University he enjoys playing a variety of sports,
such as cycling (both road and MTB), swimming, tennis, paddel and fitness. He likes all
related with cartography and map interpretation, in particular using
digital information; he is an enthusiastic of GPS navigation. He also like to listen to
classical music and to read books of (almost) any type. He is an enthusiastic
of the computers, its applications to exchange of
chemical information and in his free time he updates the web site of his
research group at the Laboratory of Asymmetric Synthesis.